SA gives third place to both Turkish SA and FASA

It seems between all the music, dance routines and costumes that help make International Fiesta an annual UB tradition, one important element was overlooked: accurately tallying up the teams' final scores.

A mathematical error on the part of the International Fiesta judges last weekend cost the Turkish Student Association a whole point - and third place in the competition. Third place went to the Filipino American Student Association (FASA), when the club should have actually finished in fourth place.

The miscalculation was discovered on Monday night and the Student Association has determined that the best solution is to give both clubs third place.

It happened like this: One of the judges gave Turkish SA an 8 of 10 in a category that was supposed to be out of five points. The judges noticed the error, but when they went to correct it, they gave Turkish SA 3 out of 5 points instead of 4 out of 5 points. This caused Turkish SA to finish with 87.5 total points when it should have had 88.5 total points - which would have beat out FASA and its 87.6 points for third place.

International Council Coordinator Joshua Racho said in an email that SA is unsure what the judges meant by their mathematical error.

"Scores were calculated by subtracting the missing points they have from the total number (100 points). Since the points were subtracted and not added, it is difficult to interpret what the judges truly meant to give (i.e. would it be 3/5 or 4/5)," Racho said in an email.

Racho performed with FASA in the competition.

Suzan Akpinar, president of Turkish SA, was disappointed by the mistake but understanding that it was due to human error.

"I was just kind of curious about the situation because as the president and captain I was kept in the dark, it was one of my dancers that realized this mistake and my friends that work in SA that kept me in the loop," Akpinar said. "But they handled it in a matter of week, so no problem there."